Most Amazing Lime Beef Tacos

Do you know that feeling where you are just so marvellously satisfied and your tongue is doing something approximate to the Macarena? That's what tonight's dinner feels like.

When I was in New York recently, I spent my first evening in this nice "Mexican Steakhouse".  As well as far too many tortilla chips and a nice wee guy serenading me with mariachi songs, the absolute highlight of the night was my main course, some cilantro lime tacos.  They weren't what I normally think of as tacos, using strips of beef and soft tortillas rather than the corn shells one normally gets over here.  The beef was marinaded in lime and probably other yummy things, covered with plenty of fresh coriander and a slice of avocado on top.  Bit of rice and salad on the side, it was absolutely wonderful!  So wonderful, in fact, that I immediately resolved to make some version of my own.  This was going to be a bit of an invention, but luckily it was one that turned out very well.

Ingredients:


1 pack of beef stir fry strips
Glug of chilli sauce

Glug of roasted garlic sauce
Lime juice
Fresh coriander
Mini-tortilla wraps
An avocado (a tub of guacamole would also be fine)


The how:

I popped the stir fry strips into a bowl with lots of lime juice, the roasted garlic sauce and chilli sauce, gave it a stir, then left to marinade in the fridge for four hours.  Then I put that mixture into a pan and cooked the beef, while trying to mangle an avocado into giving me some slices and cutting up some fresh coriander.


Disaster of the day: In the dim lighting of the outside hall, managed to mistake flat leaf parsley for coriander and wondered why it smelled so weird.  Caught my error in time thankfully!

Pop the cooked beef in to the little wraps. I could have added some onion, but I wasn't in the mood for crying my eyes out and Test Subject 1 wasn't around to cut them up for me.  Added the fresh coriander and avocado, and chowed down on an easy and fantastic dinner and a taste explosion!

Banana Bacon Cookies

When it comes to food, I really am a bit of a mad scientist.  I love strange combinations.  My favourite flavour of soup is strawberry and I like korma sauce with my burgers.  So when I found this recipe for Banana Bacon Cookies, I figured that further investigation was very much warranted.  As I mentioned in my last post, my boyfriend is visiting at the moment, and one thing nerdy males seem to love is bacon, so this seemed a good time to try my latest experiment.

In the style that saw me put "disaster" in the title of this blog, there were various muckups. Not least that my measuring jug appears to have vanished in my summer absence.  Also, the recipe was on a laptop in the other room, so going by "I think it was a tablespoon" when it was actually a teaspoon and just generally forgetting things leads to plenty fun times.  So here goes my very much approximated recipe:

Ingredients

Roughly 300g self-raising flour
Roughly 250g of caster sugar
A tablespoon of cinnamon
1/4 tablespoon of salt
250g of butter (well, Stork actually)
2 eggs
4 mashed bananas
300g pack of bacon, cooked to crisp and with any big chunks of fat cut off

The how

Put flour, cinnamon and salt in one bowl. Forget to mix it and end up not bothering because it was such a small bowl it would have made the flour go everywhere.

Cream butter and sugar by hand, because electric mixers are for wimps.

Beat eggs, then add to the creamed mixture a bit at a time, mixing all the while.

Add mashed bananas and mix.

Add flour mixture (supposed to be the other way round, but the flour bowl was way too small) and mix some more).

Add bacon and...you guessed it, mix it all!

Suddenly remember to pre-heat oven to 200C.

Grease some baking sheets (I forgot to get greaseproof paper, surprise surprise) and drop heaped tablespoons of the mixture on, leaving room for them to spread out a bit.

Bung cookies in the oven for about 12 minutes.

Attempt to let them cool before scoffing.

Fail miserably.  Have 3 before dignity intervenes.

The verdict

I was a little bit dubious about these.  I'm not a member of the Cult of Bacon like my other half (really more of a beef sausage sort of girl)  When I got them out of the oven, they looked a little too cakey and spongey for cookies, so I was doubly worried.  They turned out to be awesome!  So much for keeping some for tomorrow's guests!

I highly recommend these cookies and will definitely be making them again!  Another victory for crazy food combinations!

Sticky Pork Baguettes

Here's a meal that I discovered this spring.  I came across The Londoner via some scrumptious brownies and discovered this recipe for Sticky Pork Baguettes.  They looked tasty in the photos and I resolved to make them soon after, with the delicious results proving that they have already become a regular feature on my dinner plates.  After making it a couple of times, I've tweaked a few things, and am going to carry on experimenting as an excuse to eat these more.

Right now, my boyfriend is up visiting as I've been in foreign climes for the summer, so I have been plotting some amazing culinary gems for our reunion.  Plus, I haven't been able to cook for 3 months, so I need to get back into practice!

Epic sandwiches are usually good for my favourite test subject and he had thoroughly enjoyed these the last time I made them.

Ingredients:

French baton
Roasted garlic sauce
Lemon juice
Honey
Oil
Salt and pepper
Apple and herb stuffing
Pork steaks (I'd say two per person, which will leave some leftovers)
Salad leaves
Apple sauce
Butter

Since I'm still fighting off jet lag and getting back into the swing of cooking, I don't have any fresh garlic in at the moment.  And, less surprisingly, I substituted fresh lemon for juice because I already had juice and I'm cheap.  I prefer the apple stuffing (though my boyfriend finds the double apple a bit much without mustard, so go by your own personal taste in this).  In future, I would probably go for different bread as the hard baton is a little much.  Next time I'll perhaps try a ciabatta (because I will take any excuse I can get to eat ciabatta!).

The how:

Mix up a couple of tablespoons of honey with a liberal dash of the garlic sauce, a liberal dash of the lemon juice and a liberal dash of oil.  Add seasoning.
Grab a pastry brush and slather HALF of this tasty mixture on top of the pork steaks, then bung under the grill.


Once that's done, add some boiling water to the stuffing mix, mix in a little casserole dish (no need to dirty a bowl) and put it in the bottom if you have a combo grill/oven like mine, or put it in the oven if you don't.

Keep an eye on both stuffing and pork to see how brown they're getting.  I never remember to time things to be honest with you.  Once they're cooking nicely, prepare your bread with some butter, salad and LOTS of apple sauce.  Believe it or not, this recipe was the first time I'd ever had apple sauce, and now I'm hooked on the stuff!

My boyfriend decided to add some mustard at this stage to shake things up but the verdict was it didn't really do too much.



Turn the pork steaks over once they are starting to brown up.  Marvel at the pretty grill lines while you slather the remaining half of the mixture over the top of them.  Put them back in and wait  for pork and stuffing to look brown and ready.



Scoop some stuffing on to your waiting sandwich, and then slice your pork (I always cut up the bit without the fat and then eat the remainder later/the next morning).  Finish putting your sandwich together and enjoy!

Warning: These are very difficult to eat with dignity due to escaping bits of stuffing and general sticky fingers. Possibly not for fancy dinner parties, but if you want a great sweet tasting eat with some properly impressive pork, go right ahead!

Photo post: Blog preview

So, I've yet to make tonight's dinner, let alone blog about it (yes it's 9pm and yes I tend to eat at strange hours), but I do have a few photos of my sort of cuisine kicking around.  Here's a little taste, off the end of a wooden spoon, of what you can expect from this food blog.





Orange chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and orange chocolate buttons, made for my last day at my old job.








A Sheamus themed carrot cake for my wrestling fan friend's birthday which coincided with Wrestlemania.

The most amazing tangy chicken wraps, a regular feature in my kitchen and something I will definitely have to blog about soon.

Oreo cupcakes, always a favourite.

My summer pudding, described as "better than sex".   Not what you want to hear from your aunt....












Want to make sure boyfriend will miss me when away for three months? Doublestack burger, with cheese, onion rings and barbecue sauce.

Welcome!

I've been saying that I want to start a food blog for about 4 years now.  I never end up getting round to it, especially when I have a bad habit of eating things before I take pictures of them.  And, seeing as I am a lazy 25 year old cheap skate, things don't always go right.  Indeed, with my habit of taking recipes as "guidelines" and my allergy to measuring things out, it's a wonder that I seem to have a reputation as being someone who can cook.  Hence the "disaster" part of the blog title.  Luckily, despite plenty of opportunities, I've not had too many disasters in the kitchen.  I still have a slightly melted chopping board that is testament to an early attempt at making cookies in the microwave, using a microwave cookbook from the dawn of the technology and a machine that was about 10 times more powerful than the late 70s could have imagined.

So what delights am I intending to put up here?  I'm usually trying to lose weight, so I'll definitely be trying out some healthy recipes.  Not to say there won't be indulgences as well, because cupcakes and puddings are awesome, as is cheese.  I'm pretty cosmopolitan when it comes to food - I eat Indian, Mexican, Italian, Spanish, Scottish, Chinese and more on a regular basis, and I'll try anything once.   My laptops and mobile phones have bookmark folders full of recipes from around the web, in addition to my Big Green Folder of Recipes, and my mum's recipe collection dating back to beyond the dawn of time.

I'm not one for pretension, so most of these recipes will use the minimum of fancy equipment (since I don't have much), cheap ingredients from Tesco (or if I'm really pushing the boat out, from Lidl!) and presentation that is not going to impress any Masterchef judges.  But if you think a mad scientist approach to food is fun, I invite you to pull up a chair and dig in.